Wednesday, 11 May 2011

priorities

I saw a bloke acting suspiciously with a bike outside the Commercial Rooms in Corn Street, Bristol; he was wrestling with the rear carrier, which was broken. There was a U-bolt lock hanging on the adjacent bike racks, and I wondered if he'd just broken the bike free of it. So I kept an eye on him. I followed him to the corner of Broad Street, where he struggled with a locked bike, removing the top tube pad. Then he wobbled off.

I took some pictures of him, and sent details of the incident to Avon and Somerset police.

This was on Saturday 30th April. Today, eleven days later, they still haven't been in touch.

Meantime, the bill for the policing of Stokes Croft, where they responded to a call from the security guards at Tesco by sending in 160 riot police from all over the region, is set to run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. The Tesco guards had claimed that there were petrol bombs in Telepathic Heights, the squat opposite the store. It might have been cheaper, and possibly more effective, had a PCSO dropped into the squat, to have a quiet chat with the residents and see what the true story was.

And then the city would have been a bit more peaceful, and maybe the police would have had some time to investigate bike thefts.